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Level C1

Listening

I can follow extended speech even when it is not clearly structured and when relationships are only implied and not signalled explicitly.

I can understand professional jargon, appreciating shifts in style and register.

I can understand complex technical information, such as operating instructions, specifications for familiar products and services.

I can understand lectures, talks and reports in my field of professional or academic interest even when they are propositionally and linguistically complex.

Reading

I can read complex reports, analyses and commentaries where opinions, viewpoints and connections are discussed.

I can extract information, ideas and opinions from highly specialised texts in my own field, for example research reports.

I can understand long complex instructions, for example for the use of a new piece of equipment, if these are related to my job or field of interest.

I can read any correspondence within my field with the occasional use of a dictionary.

Spoken Interaction

I can keep up with a conversation between native speakers.

I can use the language fluently, accurately and effectively on a wide range of general, professional or academic topics.

I can use language flexibly and effectively for social purposes, including emotional, allusive and joking usage.

I can express my ideas and opinions clearly and precisely, and can present and respond to complex lines of reasoning convincingly.

Spoken Production

I can give clear, detailed descriptions of complex subjects.

I can orally summarise long, demanding texts.

I can give an extended description or account of something, integrating themes, developing particular points and concluding appropriately.

I can give a clearly developed presentation on a subject in my fields of personal or professional interest, departing when necessary from the prepared text and following up spontaneously points raised by members of the audience.

Strategies

I can use fluently a variety of appropriate expressions to preface my remarks in order to get the floor, or to gain time and keep the floor while thinking.

I can relate own contribution skilfully to those of other speakers.

I can substitute an equivalent term for a word I can’t recall without distracting the listener.

Language Quality

I can express myself fluently and spontaneously, almost effortlessly on every conceptually familiar subject.

I can produce clear, smoothly-flowing, well-structured speech, showing control over ways of developing what I want to say in order to link both my ideas and my expression of them into coherent text.

I have a good command of a broad vocabulary allowing gaps to be readily overcome with circumlocutions; I rarely have to search obviously for expressions or compromise on saying exactly what I want to.

I can consistently maintain a high degree of grammatical accuracy; errors are rare and difficult to spot.

Writing

I can express myself in writing on a wide range of professional topics in a clear manner.

I can present a complex topic in a clear and well-structured way, highlighting the most important points, for example in an article or a report.

I can put together information from different sources and present it in a coherent summary.

I can write formally correct correspondence with occasional use of dictionary

I can write texts which show a high degree of grammatical correctness and vary my vocabulary and style according to the addressee, the kind of text and the topic.